Koo Kwang-mo, the first chaebol chief to deliver a New Year’s address, doubled down on customer value as LG’s priority.
LG Group Chair Koo Kwang-mo said the conglomerate stands at a critical inflection point and must move beyond past success formulas to pursue focused innovation that delivers clear value to customers in his New Year message on Monday.
In a video message sent to LG Employees worldwide, Koo said the company must make deliberate choices about where to concentrate its resources, warning that incremental improvement would no longer be sufficient.
“Today we find ourselves at an inflection point where a new future is unfolding. Shaping that future is both our responsibility and opportunity. So, let’s prioritize what will bring smiles to our customers 10 years from now, and focus our actions today to make them a reality. I believe that’s the kind of innovation LG does best,” he said.
Koo was the first among the heads of Korea’s major conglomerates to release a New Year’s message. Since 2022, LG has delivered its annual address at the end of the year instead of at the start of the new year.
The chair emphasized the need for selection and concentration, urging the group to identify a single core value that resonates most deeply with customers.
“It takes courage to let go of 10 ordinary strengths and choose one core value that really matters, but that’s how we set clear directions for our innovation and pull together,” he said.
“Once identified, let that be the uncompromising goal we push ourselves toward, to a level that others consider impossible. Such relentless focus will create an experience our customers will find ‘truly different’ and deliver exceptional value that raises the bar.”
Customer value has been a central theme of Koo’s leadership since he took office in 2018. Beginning with his 2019 New Year’s message, Koo has consistently framed LG’s long-term strategy around delivering differentiated customer experiences, refining the concept each year.
In 2019, he defined LG’s customer value as delivering meaningful impact on customers’ lives, leading rather than following, and sustaining innovation over time. Subsequent messages focused on identifying customer pain points, deepening customer segmentation and creating experiences so compelling that customers would not want to return to previous alternatives.
For this year, Koo has stressed employee ownership of customer value and the need for deep immersion in differentiated experiences as LG seeks to position itself as a global leader in customer experience innovation.
Ahead of Koo’s message, LG shared interviews from three external experts to highlight a shift in technology, competition and consumer expectations.
George Westerman, a senior lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management, said generative artificial intelligence signals a major technological paradigm shift comparable to the advent of electricity or the internet.
“Technologies like generative AI can be considered a general-purpose technology innovation. And when these technologies happen, it’s not possible to predict the level of change, but it is possible to predict that the change will be very, very large,” he said.
Westerman also noted that, because AI is going to change so many things at an unexpected speed, large organizations “need to develop a capability to change faster than you do now.”
LG said the inclusion of external perspectives was intended to help employees better understand the scale of change facing the group as it enters the new year.
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